Annihilation of caste, a review
The exposure you get as a typical Tamil Brahmin to Dr. B. R. Ambedkar is one of indifference (as opposed to Periyar, which is one of hostility). You know he drafted the constitution. You see stray statues of him in the underprivileged settlements. And that is about it.
You don’t get to hear about what a well-read man he was. You don’t get to see the extent of his genius, the depth of his understanding of complex issues. You don’t see his unwavering commitment to utter intellectual honesty and compassion towards his fellow man.
All of these are on display in Annihilation of Caste. Annihilation of Caste is my first Ambedkar book and it has blown me away.
The book was originally a speech meant to be delivered as a presidential address for the Jan-Pat Todak Mandal, a radical faction of the Arya Samaj which sought to destroy the evil of caste by inter-dining and inter-marriage. The speech prepared in 1936 was never delivered as the Mandal cancelled the event worried about the mention of Ambedkar’s imminent departure from the Hindu religion.
That the speech was never delivered is a blessing in disguise for us all because instead of being a speech that was listened to once, this gem of a work is a published book that can and must be read and re-read.
The text of the speech opens with sarcastic humour that would have drawn a chuckle from the intended audience and definitely captivated their attention. Ambedkar starts by questioning the Mandal’s choice to have him deliver the address. And in the second paragraph itself, he launches a sardonic attack at the sastras by quoting the Manusmriti (10.3) which says that amongst the varnas it is the brahmin alone who is the teacher, thereby disqualifying Ambedkar, as untouchable from addressing and educating the Mandal.
From there Ambedkar goes into detail differentiating political and social reform, and how his contemporaries fail to see that the latter is more important than the former. He illustrates this by means of flagrant social injustices that even today plague the Shudras and Avarnas of the country. He was indeed prophetic in claiming that “so long as we do not achieve social liberty, whatever freedom is provided by the law is of no avail to us”[1].
Ambedkar’s speech as it progresses from there is extremely erudite. From ancient Rome to Karl Marx he quotes the intelligentsia across the world and ages, peppering his work with historical and literary references with the poise of an exceptional scholar.
But what really stands out for me is the grace with which he sticks to his intellectual honesty. The plethora of apt references he provides, the artful analogies he employs, the powerful rhetoric that reverberates all through the speech are all but embellishments to the truth he states.
And that truth is the fact that “The Hindu religion compels Hindus to treat isolation and segregation of caste as virtue.” As an erstwhile devout Hindu, I can attest to the statement’s veracity. While the Hindu religion, its scriptures, and its practices possess many profound ideas, it is irrefutable that the doctrine of Karma which is central to the religion determines your position in the caste and gender hierarchy of the Hindu society in an unalterable manner. There are many attempts to gloss over this by explaining it away intellectually. But to brush away a religion’s fundamental tenet with such sophistry is the same as a toxic narcissist writing off the harm he has caused with mere words.
And it is this hypocrisy that Ambedkar exposes with the cold skilled hand of a surgeon in Annihilation of caste. Having exposed this, he suggests a way out.
While he acknowledges the courage of the Mandal in promoting inter-caste marriages which even today are rewarded with the extra-judicial life sentence of ostracization or the ultimate death sentence, he claims categorically that this is not enough. His reasoning behind this is that as long as the religion’s fundamental principles remain the same, there is no incentive for the populace to inter-dine or inter-marry or even to intermingle.
His solution is to destroy the authority of the sastras, the scriptures of rules, and reinvent the Hindu religion as one of principles. I quote below his sagacious delineation between the concept of rules and principles.
I do not know whether you draw a distinction between principles and rules. But I do. Not only I make a distinction but I say that this distinction is real and important. Rules are practical; they are habitual ways of doing things according to prescription. But principles are intellectual; they are useful methods of judging things. Rules seek to tell an agent just what course of action to pursue. Principles do not prescribe a specific course of action. Rules, like cooking recipes, do tell just what to do and how to do it. A prinsiple, such as that of justice, supplies a main head by reference to which he is to consider the bearings of his desires and purposes, it guides him in his thinking by suggesting to him the important consideration which he should bear in mind. This difference between rules and principles makes the acts done in pursuit of them different in quality and in content. Doing what is said to be good by virtue of a rule and doing good in the light of a principle are two different things. The principle may be wrong but the act is conscious and responsible. The rule may be right but the act is mechanical. A religious act may not be a correct act but must at least be a responsible act. To permit of this responsibility, Religion must mainly be a matter of principles only. It cannot be a matter of rules. The moment it degenerates into rules it ceases to be Religion, as it kills responsibility which is the essence of a truly religious act.
While it is true that all religions will benefit from shifting towards a system of principles rather than rules, the benefit to the Hindu religion would be immense because it offers the religion an opportunity to undo the innumerable historical wrongs it has caused and to bring forth its truly profound principles as espoused in the Upanishads. Even Ambedkar refers to them as a probable base for reinventing the religion.
The speech is accompanied by an exchange between Gandhi and Ambedkar. The ‘Mahatma’ as Ambedkar refers to Gandhi with obvious sarcasm, published a two-part rejoinder to Ambedkar’s speech with the rather ominous title — “Dr. Ambekdar’s indictment”. Unfortunately, the rejoinder only serves as an indictment of the Mahatma’s position on caste which is as clear as mud. He talks of rejecting caste but upholding varna by following one’s ancestral calling which is just a roundabout way of supporting hereditary professions. He talks of the utopian life he sees at Segaon (which later became Sevagram), blind to the horror that is caste in the lived experience of millions of Hindus. He takes offense at Sant Ramji’s claim that Hinduism can only be saved by rejecting caste, varna, and the shastras that support them without offering any meaningful alternative.
Where Amebdkar strides like a lion armed with knowledge and clarity, Gandhi flounders like a blind fish on land grasping to his prejudices. The saving grace of the ‘indictment’ is the grace and respect with which he has drafted it. An aspect that is sorely lacking in our country’s current political scene.
Ambedkar’s quality stands out in how he holds himself and his fellow men (to quote himself) to standards that are right without worrying about whether they are too high or too low. Those stands based on “social ethics” are what every India, especially every Hindu must hold themselves to.
For only then can we lose the dubious distinction of being the only religion in the world whose followers purely by virtue of their birth are denied equal participation in the religion itself with such segregation being officially sanctioned by the religion.
Annihilation of caste is a book that every Hindu must read and re-read, even more than their scriptures, epics, and chants.
Jai Bhim!
